I found at least one noticeable issue. Early on, Gerald claims: "A reduction of the number of children placed in residential treatment centers, from an all-time high of 148 in 2007 to a historic low of 44 in 2010." Unless his number of kids in RTCs has dramatically dropped in the last few months, he's wrong. According to CFSA documents submitted to its long-standing court monitor, the agency had more than 70 children in residential placements as of Aug. 31.

I had asked Gerald and others at CFSA about this discrepancy a few months ago. What I got was a bunch of nonsense. It basically amounted to this bizarre logic: Some residential placements were counted as residential placements for the court monitor and not for their own in-house stats. It was also clear that some facilities that were considered RTCs by our own juvenile-justice system got no such designation by our own child-welfare agency.

What is clear: CFSA's numbers game is a horrible way to monitor residential placements.

Recently, Gerald was told that he would have to re-apply for his job as agency director. This may or not be a concern for Gerald. I know at least one other agency head who received such a letter from Mayor Vincent Gray. It all could just be standard. Still, it might account for Gerald adopting Gray's rhetoric and alluding to the events in Tuscon to make his case:

"But we know we must push for continued improvement, and Mayor Vincent Gray’s vision of “One City” provides an excellent framework for open discourse and development of lasting solutions that strengthen the local safety net. At the CFSA, we must do our part by deepening our commitment to address these issues, in collaboration with our partners. Constructive discussion that identifies system strengths and seeks solutions to the deeply rooted social ills that place children at risk has never been more necessary than at this critical economic time.

True community development includes investments in infrastructure and human capital. A return to civility in our discourse can help in avoiding complacency and feelings of defeat stemming from the challenges. The child welfare system will benefit most by accepting valid criticism that also acknowledges the social challenges and systemic improvements that form the real-world context for further growth."

What is so startling about this last graph is Gerald's implication that criticisms of his agency haven't been civil. Nor are they valid unless loaded down with "real-world" caveats. Is there another agency head who every time he screws up gets to say "but life is hard?"

Does Gerald actually think Carl Foster, who runs a non-profit and wrote a recent piece critical of CFSA, is not civil? Foster was being incredibly brave when he wrote that piece. Few non-profits ever go on the record for fear of losing funding. His account of trying to get help for one child and one family through the hotline was a harrowing example of social-worker indifference.

Does Gerald actually think Jumiya Crump, the 17-year-old in my story, was being impolite when she pleaded with her social worker to live with her own family?

Actually, if you think about it, when it comes to serious questions concerning child neglect and a city's lackluster response, we should be anything but civil.

In a 46-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan held today that D.C.'s Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is not yet ready to come out from under its court oversight. This represents a significant setback for Attorney General Peter Nickles, who has pressed to end the court-appointed monitoring of the troubled agency.

Hogan had taken months to come to his decision. In July 2008, in the aftermath of the Banita Jacks tragedy, Children's Rights filed its contempt motion. Soon, Hogan ordered CFSA to come up with a plan to fix itself. The District had a difficult time actually completing this task. Instead, Nickles drafted a plan without the court monitor's approval. Bad idea.

Meanwhile, Nickles and Fenty selected Dr. Roque Gerald to run the agency. They did so without consulting Children's Rights–another bad idea, and a violation of a court order. Hogan did not like this move, and Nickles ended up having to play defense.

Imagine all that Hogan had to sift through before issuing today's ruling. But wait, there's more!

As the debate continued through 2009, even a CFSA official suggested court oversight was a good thing, and University Legal Services published another scathing report on the agency. The court monitor issued a report critical of CFSA's foster care. And teens testified before the D.C. Council on the difficulties of aging out of the system.

What's at stake here? A review of recent Child Fatality Review Board reports suggests that a lot of kids die under the city's watch. Within the past year, two newborns died at D.C. General's family shelter.

In his ruling, Hogan held Mayor Adrian Fenty in contempt for not consulting with plaintiffs or court monitor in hiring Gerald.

Hogan also held the city in contempt for failing to come up a plan approved by the court monitor. He ruled that the District showed a "blatant disregard" in failing to work with the court monitor. He writes: "Intransigence may be a nominal improvement from indifference, but it is still unacceptable in this context."

Hogan dismissed the District's motion to end federal court oversight. In a number of key areas—conducting timely investigations, adoptions, and training of CFSA employees—the judge expressed skepticism that CFSA had improved enough to show compliance with court-approved benchmarks. He writes: "Unfortunately, in light of the District's refusal to abide by the simplest provisions of the Stipulated Order, the Court cannot find that a period of good faith has persisted. Nor has the District achieved, let alone established a period of consistent compliance."

While Hogan agreed that the District has made progress in improving CFSA, it has not done so in a complete, real and sustained way. "Undoubtedly, CFSA has taken measures to buttress reforms," Hogan writes. "But the defendants have not illustrated any, at least not in a manner that inspires enough confidence to support a conclusion that the agency's progress is 'durable and self-sustaining.'"

In his conclusion, Hogan writes:

"Extensive litigation on these motions has changed little. Although the District's child welfare system has improved drastically from the dismal state it was once in, the defendants have yet to deliver a fully satisfactory child welfare system....Supervision must persist until the defendants demonstrate that the District reliably satisfies its responsibilities."

The result: All the parties must formulate a plan for CFSA.

"It's very much the right ruling," Children's Rights Executive Director Marcia Lowry tells City Desk.  "I'm hoping this is finally going to ensure the case moves forward to accomplish the purposes of the agreement which the District has really stalled on."

Lowry still sees the courts as the appropriate venue for monitoring the troubled child-welfare agency.

"It's a fight over doing what's necessary," Lowry says. "The problem was there had been an agreement a long time ago about what should be accomplished for a child. The District about a year ago decided it didn't want to do that anymore so it didn't make a plan....That seemed to be a real disregard for what children need."

The case is now more than 20 years old.

"I have a lot of patience," Lowry says. "I represent a group of children in the District and I am going to represent them as vigoriously as I can....I find it a real waste of resources. This is a small system. It could have been fixed a long time ago."

File photo by Darrow Montgomery

CSSP is the court-appointed monitor. Its reports are the fuel for the ongoing case in U.S. District Court. It's going to be difficult for Nickles to make legal arguments refuting their findings. The Center does their homework and are one of the most thorough watchdogs in the District. This latest report, culled from investigative work conducted during this past summer, shows that CFSA still has deep and fundamental problems in how it cares for foster kids.

"The Monitor's overall recommendation is that CFSA devote significant quality improvement resources to better understand the experiences of foster parents and children during the placement process," the report states.

The report only gets worse from there.

The court monitor's investigation found that CFSA's own computer system did not contain accurate foster parent contact information for 20 percent of the 134 children it studied. The system appeared "to overstate" the number of visits social workers made to foster homes. And, the system's "security practices are not uniformly followed, making it difficult to assign accountability for case practice action in all cases."

It also found that in 25 percent of the cases, the foster parent reported that the child was no longer in their care. "Some children continued to be moved...even when foster parents report that they would be willing to care for children for extended periods," the report states.

Foster Care Placements

The monitor found that 17 of the 69 applicable children (or 25 percent) were no longer in placements identified in CFSA's computer system. In other words, the computer system had the wrong address for 25 percent of the children surveyed. For the majority of these kids, they were moved to other foster homes despite the foster parents stating that they would have kept the children. Ten of the children went to another foster home; three children went to various group homes.

Medical Needs

For more than a third of the children studied, foster parents reported that CFSA did not provide them with the required basic information concerning the child's medical and mental-health history. The Monitor notes that CFSA failed this court benchmark. Ninety-five percent of children should be given documentation of Medicaid coverage within five days of placement. Less than half of the foster parents stated that they had received such documentation. Half of the children did not receive proper dental care—another benchmark failed.

Social Workers

The report noted that social workers are failing at their most basic task: Visiting the children under their supervision. The monitor wrote that only one child out of the 112 applicable children received all the required social worker visits after entering a new placement. Four percent of the children studied received zero visits by social workers within the first month of their new placement.

In one case a social worker wrote that they had done such a visit only to record that they did not actually see the child. They only spoke with a sibling.

The monitor also noted that the access to these children's files were easily accessed within CFSA's computer system known as FACES:

"In multiple cases, the Monitor saw contact notes that were entered through a supervisor or program manager's access to FACES, but were actually authored and signed by someone other than the supervisor or manager. In other words, a supervisor or manager's access to FACES was used to gain entry to the electronic case record and a different person...had authored the contact note."

Foster Parents Left In The Dark

For almost one third of the children studied, the foster parents reported zero knowledge of the child's goals within the system. For example, they did not know whether the child was working towards reunification with a parent, working on a kinship placement, or an independent living arrangement.

Foster parents told the monitor they were not too happy with CFSA. The monitor writes:

"Foster parents for nearly half othe children told CSSP they did not believe the services and supports being provided for the children in their care were sufficient to meet the children's needs."

*follow me on twitter.

This morning in U.S. District Court, Judge Thomas F. Hogan took up the on-going legal battle over the District's Child and Family Services Agency. At issue was whether or not the agency could be held in contempt. Hogan devoted much of his consternation on the how the District went about picking Dr. Roque Gerald (pictured) to head up CFSA.

At the time of Dr. Gerald's selection, City Desk questioned whether the District violated Hogan's order. We wrote:

"Last fall, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan issued an order stipulating a series of directives. One of those stipulations involved the future selection of a permanent director at CFSA. On Tuesday, Fenty announced his selection of interim director Roque Gerald to take over in a permanent capacity. Hogan had stipulated that “the Court Monitor and Plaintiffs will be included in the selection process for the permanent Director.'...

The Plaintiffs–Children’s Rights–say they were never consulted during the selection process. “We were not included in the process and I think given the problems the agency has had over the last several years the choice of the director was critically important,” says Children’s Rights Executive Director Marcia Robinson Lowry. She adds that this violated the court order."

While Gerald has gotten high praise from child advocates and has definitively saved the agency from the fallout over the Jacks case, Hogan suggested today that the city had indeed violated his order. Hogan dubbed the city's following of his order a "blatant" failure. Maybe he too doesn't like Fenty's secretive m.o.

The bulk of the nearly two hour proceedings over the contempt motion did not center on Gerald's selection. Instead, Children's Rights and the city's attorneys debated whether or not CFSA had made significant progress in helping kids in care. No kids testified. It was all lawyers debating the whether or not the agency had cleared various benchmarks.

Children's Rights' Lowry showed charts proving that the agency had failed to meet the majority of those benchmarks which covered everything from staff training to placing kids in foster homes. She told the court that the agency had "not yet reached a level where they are protecting children."

Lowry provided a staggering timeline of accepted benchmarks and the agency's slow and often negligent response dating back several years. She stated that CFSA had only met 15 out of the 68 benchmarks. This was just a mere snapshot of the agency's problems which were detailed in a recent court monitor's report.

Lowry's testimony touched on the court monitor's findings that fewer and fewer kids are leaving the system through adoption. The monitor also reported that a huge number of children and youth are living in unlicensed foster homes or facilities.

"As of January 31, 2009, there were 1575 children in foster home placements. Of the 1574 children, 74 (5 percent) children were placed in foster homes that exceeded their licensed capacity. Additionally, there were 178 children placed in group homes as of January 31, 2009. Of the 178 children, 39 (22%) children were placed in group homes that exceeded their licensed capacity of 8 children...."

The monitor also reported that of the 1007 foster homes where children were placed, 10 percent of those homes did not have current and valid licenses. Prior to the hearing, Children's Rights had flagged other aspects of the monitor's report—chief among them was the agency's alleged overuse of group homes and residential treatment facilities as housing options for children in care as well as how quick the agency investigated neglect/abuse allegations.

Again, this was a short hearing. City Attorney Ellen Efros kept her points short. She emphasized that the agency had made progress but that the benchmarks were too old and too tough to actually meet. She argued that the standards are lower in other cities—in other words, why can't we just lower our standards? Efros, though, could not cite any other jurisdiction's standards.

At one point early on in Efros' testimony, Hogan interrupted her and sounded an exasperated note: "We've been at this since 1989."

Hogan was referring to the agency's rollercoaster history—the inception of the class-action case, subsequent receivership and bumpy road since the city agency shedded court oversight in 2003. Hogan did not at all seemed pleased with Efros' attempts to jettison benchmarks that didn't fit her theory of a fit agency and denounce other benchmarks as too harsh.

"It seems...oversight by the judiciary is important," Hogan later stated.

Still, Hogan declined to rule on the contempt motion. He says he is keeping it under consideration. The next hearing is set for July 20.

As he left the courtroom, Gerald had no comment.

Prior to the hearing, Lowry talked about the problems with the city warehousing kids. "The placement process in the District is extremely hit or miss," she said. "There is not a real effort to develop the kinds of resources that the kids need and certainly there’s a very slipshod process about where the kids should go. There’s no question, there are too few appropriate foster homes and too few foster homes all together."

Lowry says the city needs to invest in a real plan. "I don't think there's anything approaching long-term planning," she explains. "One thing that's so alarming about the course that they are now on—they don't have any long term plans for the agency and certainly their aspirations for the agency are very insufficient."